Electronic clock devices

ABSTRACT

An electronic clock device comprises time measuring means for counting hours to produce a carry signal at each 24 hours, sevenstep counter means stepped by the carry signal for counting seven days of the week, and seven display elements for displaying the days of the week in accordance with the content of the seven-step counter means.

United States Patent 11 1 1111 3,889,458

Kashio 1 June 17, 1975 15 1 ELECTRONIC CLOCK DEVICES 3,276,198 10/1966 Barbera 3,477,222 11/1969 Laun el al....,.... 58/4 A 1751 Kashm Tokyo, J8Pa" 3,574,992 4/1971 Ladas 58/50 R 73 Assigns: Casi) Computer Cm LldnTokyo 3,597,912 8/1971 Akatzanonm 58/5 Japan 3,630,015 12/1971 Lenovec 58/50 R 3,646,751 3/1972 Purland et a1... 58/50 R [22] Filed: Mar. 15, 1973 3,668,861 6/1972 Mitsui 58/50 R 3,733,810 5/1973 Girard 58/4 A 1 1 pp 341,583 3,796,037 3/1974 Fujita 513/50 R [30] Foreign Application Priority Data Primary Examiner-Edith Simmons Jackmon Mar. 15 1972 Japan 4726381 Ammey' Frishauf Apr, 21, 1972 Japan 47-40086 [57] ABSTRACT An electronic clock device comprises time measuring means for counting hours to produce a carry signal at [581 Field of Search 58/4 50 each 24 hours, seven-step counter means stepp d by the carry signal for counting seven days of the week, and seven display elements for displaying the days of [56] References Cited the week in accordance with the content of the seven- UNITED STATES PAThNTS step COumer means. 2.542.021 2 1951 Fox 1 1 513/50 R 3,166,742 1/1966 Sherwin 58 50 R x 5 Claims, 4 Drawlflg Figures '60 SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT \'O 3 O O O O Y 8.888.458 PATENTEDJUN 1 7 ms SHE 1 F I G. I

6 SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT w g o o o o g I60 |6Q 33 DECODER 32\. EM? '4 COUNTER 5 DRIVER 7 I 1 T T 25b DECODER DRIVER 250 i l 24b DECODER 22 i r r f24c an r f f r COUNTER COUNTER cour wsa \COUNTER COUNTER F 2o CLOCK SIGNAL 2? GENERATOR 2 DATA BUTTON PATENTEDJUN I 7 m5 SHEET FIG. 3

SUN

MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT PATENTEDJUN 1 7 I975 SHEEI QMPZDOU mmoOowo mmooomo NN mm mmQOOmQ 1 ELECTRONIC CLOCK DEVICES This invention relates to a clock device. and more particularly to an improved digital clock device capable of efficiently displaying dates and the days of the week.

The display of time in a clock is usually accomplished by means of a long hand indicating minutes and a short hand indicating hours. Recently, a digital clock has been developed in which the time is displayed digitally. In such a digital clock it is necessary to use as large a display as possible for displaying digits for facilitating the reading of the displayed time.

For this reason, when applying the digital display to a clock of small size, for example a wrist watch, it is necessary to use the large area of the dial plate for digital display. Where dates and days of the week are also to be displayed in such a small digital clock, sufficient space is not available for displaying the dates and the days of the week. Also sufficient space is not available for displaying seconds. For this reason, the display on the dial plate is simple which does not give an attractive appearance, and which does not call the attention of the user because the state of the display is not dynamic.

Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved clock device capable of efficiently displaying the dates and the days of the week without using any dial plate other than that for displaying hours and minutes.

Another object of this invention is to provide an improved clock device capable of efficiently displaying minutes, hours, dates and the days of the week as well as dynamically displaying seconds in a limited space available for display in the clock device.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION According to one aspect of this invention there is provided an electronic clock device of the type including electronic counter means for counting the time and time display means for displaying the content of the electronic counter means, characterized in that there are provided seven step counter means operated stepwisely by a carry signal generated by the electronic counter means at each 24 hours for counting 7 days of the week, and seven display means providing unique displays to indicate the 7 days of the week, the displays; corresponding to the contents of the seven step counter means.

According to another aspect of this invention there is provided an electronic clock device of the type including counter means for counting hours and minutes and display means for displaying the content of the counter means, characterized in that there are provided second counter means for counting six values at an interval of seconds, six display means corresponding to the six values, days of the week counter means for counting seven values representing the 7 days of the week, display switching means operated by an operator for switching the six display means for displaying six output values of the days of the week counter means, and means for flickering at each second one display means which corresponds to the particular one value representing a day of the week.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 shows a plan view of a clock device embodying this invention;

FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of a control circuit for driving the clock device shown in FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 shows a plan view of another embodiment of this invention; and

FIG. 4 shows a block diagram of a control circuit for driving the clock device shown in FIG. 3.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF ILLUSTRATED EMBODIMENTS The digital wrist watch shown in FIG. 1 comprises a body 11 which is fastened to the wrist of the user by two bands 12. The dial plate 13 contained in the body 11 is provided with an hour display section I4 and a minute display section 15, each section displaying two letters or displaying digits. Above these display sections I4 and 15 are arranged seven display elements, for example, luminous elements 16a, 16b, 16c, 16d, 16e, 16f and 16g which are arranged along a straight line. If desired, words, Sunday, Monday, etc. which represent the days of the week may be labelled to these luminous elements 16a to 16g as shown in FIG. I. However, since usually the clays of the week begin from Sunday, it is not always necessary to label such words to the luminous elements 16a to 16g.

Turning now to FIG. 2, the hour display section I4 and the minute display section 15 are composed of liquid crystal display members, respectively, which are driven by the outputs from first and second drivers I7 and 18, respectively. If the space available in the body 11 permits, the liquid crystal displaying elements may be replaced by digit display tubes of well known construction.

In the circuit shown in FIG. 2 the clock or second signals, which are the basic units of the time are generated by a clock signal generator 19, for example, a crystal oscillator having frequency dividers, which generates one pulse per second. The output second signals generated by the clock signal generator 19 are applied to a sixty step counter 20 which operates to generate one carry signal for each sixty second pulses or one minute. The carry signals from the counter 20 are applied to a second sixty step counter 21 which functions to supply minute display signals to a decoder 22 and carry signals to twelve-step counter 23. In response to the minute display signals, the decoder 22 functions to convert these signals into other forms of minute display signals suitable for digitally displaying minutes on the liquid crystal displaying members of the section 15 via a driver 18.

The counter 23 receives carry signals from counter 21 at a rate of one signal per hour, and the contents of counter 23 are applied to one input terminal of each of the AND gate circuits 24a, 24b, 24c The outputs of these AND gate circuits 24a, 24b, 24c. are applied to a decoder 26 via OR gate circuits 25a, 25b, 25c, and are converted into hour display signals suitable to display digits representing hours by the liquid crystal displaying members. These converted signals are sent to the hour display section 14 through a driver 17 for displaying hours. The output from a date display button 27 is impressed upon the other inputs of AND gate circuits 24a, 24b, 24c via an inverter 28 so that AND gate circuits 24a, 24b, 24c are enabled only when the date button 27 does not produce any output and the display of hours by the hour display section 14 is performed.

The carry signal produced by twelve-step counter 23 at a rate of one signal per 12 hours is applied to a binary counter 29. Consequently, the counter 29 produces a carry signal at a rate of one signal per day and the output carry signal thereof is applied to thirty-one-step counter 30 and to a seven-step counter 32. The content of counter 30 which corresponds to the counted number of days is applied to the inputs of AND gate circuits 31a, 31b together with the outputs from the date button 27. Thus, in the presence of the output from the date button 27, AND gate circuits 24a, 24b, are enabled to send date display signals from AND gate cir cuits 31a, 31b to driver 17 via OR gate circuits 25a, 25b and decoder 26, thereby displaying the dates on hour display section 14 instead of hours.

The contents of the seven-step counter 32 which correspond to the number of the counted days ofthe week are converted into the days of the week signals corresponding to Sunday, Monday Saturday, respectively, by a decoder 33 and the outputs from decoder 33 are applied to seven displaying elements 16a, 16b 16g shown in FIG, 1 via a driver 34. As the displaying elements 16a to 16g, may be used electric lamps, liquid crystal displaying members which luminously display when they are applied with voltage, etc, for example According to this embodiment, hours and minutes are displayed digitally and upon depression of the date button 27, the hour display is switched to the date display. In addition, the day of the week is displayed by the operation of one of seven display members. In this manner, by using digital display sections which display hours and minutes and very small seven display elements it is possible to display hours, minutes, dates and the days of a week. Thus the invention is especially advantageous for clocks or watches of small size.

When a days of a week display button is used for the purpose of displaying the days of a week at any desired time, it is possible to lengthen the useful life ofa battery contained in the clock. However, continuous operation of the display elements not only improves the appear ance but also gives a dynamic feeling. Such construction is particularly advantageous for wrist watches.

A modified embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4 in which elements corresponding to those shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 are designated by the same reference numerals. In this embodiment, six display elements 16b to 16g corresponding to from Monday to Saturday, respectively, are arranged at a suitable spacing along a straight line above an hours and dates display section 13, and a display element 16a displaying a Sunday is disposed above the straight line of elements 16!) to 16g. Again, the days ofa week are labelled, but on Sunday a single display element [6a is operated and on Monday to Saturday display elements [6b to 16;; aligned on a line are operated sequentially so that even though the days of a week are not displayed by letters, what day of the week can be readily determined. Furthermore, the body ll of the watch is provided with a display switching member in the form of a push button 40, for instance.

With reference to FIG. 4, the second display output from sixty-step counter 20 which counts the second signal produced by clock signal generator 19 is applied to a decoder 41 which functions to send sequentially an output signal to AND gate circuits 42a, 42b, 42c, 42:1. 426 and 42fat a rate of one signal per ten counts or [U seconds. More specifically, when the content of counter 20 equals one to nine, for each ten seconds, the

output of the counter 20 is sent to AND gate circuit 42a, when the count equals to eleven to twenty, the

output signal is sent to AND gate circuit 42b, and when the count equals to twenty-one to thirty the output signal is sent to AND gate circuit 420 and so on. The other inputs of AND gate circuits 42a to 42f are connected to a push button 40 via an inverter 43, so that AND gate circuits 42a to 42f operate only when there is no information from push button 40 to energize display elements 16b to 163 through OR gate circuits 44b to 44g and driver 34 for displaying the days of a week. In this manner, in the absence of the output from push button 40 for displaying the days of a week, six display elements 16b to 16g are sequentially and cyclically energized at an interval of seconds. For example, when element 16d, that is the third element from left is operating at a given instant, this means that seconds from 21 to 30 are being displayed.

The date stepping signal generated by binary counter 29 at a rate of one carry signal per day is counted by a seven-step counter 32 and the contents thereof corresponding to the days ofa week are applied to one input terminal of each of the AND gate circuits 45a to 45g corresponding to Sunday through Saturday, respectively. The other inputs of these AND gate circuits are connected to receive the output from push button 40 so that when push button 40 is operated, AND gate cir cuits 42a to 42f are disabled and the outputs of AND gate circuits 45a to 45g are supplied to driver 34 via OR gate circuits 44a to 44g, Thus, either one of the display elements 16a to 16g is operated by the output of one of OR gate circuits 44a to 44g thus displaying a particular day of the week.

As in the foregoing embodiment, the carry signal from counter 29 is sent to a thirty-one-step counter 30 and the content thereof for displaying the date of a month is sent to one input of an AND gate circuit 46 via decoder 26 whereas the content is sent to driver 17 through AND gate 46 and an OR gate 47 when the push button 40 is operated thereby displaying a date on the hour display section 14. Since the other input of OR gate 47 is connected to receive the content of twelvestep counter 23 which displays hours through decoder 48 and AND gate circuit 49, where the push button 40 is not operated the AND gate circuit 49 is enabled by the output of inverter 43 thus displaying hours on the hours display section 14.

The output from clock pulse generator 19 is applied to a binary counter 50, the output thereof being applied to one input of an AND gate circuit 51. The other input of this AND gate circuit Sl is connected to receive the output of inverter 43 and the output of AND gate circuit 51 is applied to the other input of OR gate circuit 44a. With this connection, when the push button or an actuator 40 is not operated, AND gate circuit 51 is enabled by the output of inverter 43 whereby the output from binary counter 50 operates a particular display element lbu at each second via OR gate circuit 44a.

in the modified clock device described above, when the push button 40 is not operated, the minutes display section is operated by the output from driver 18 and the hours display section 14 is operated by the output from driver 17. At the same time a particular display element 16a is caused to be energized at each second by the output of binary counter 50 for displaying seconds. Further, six display elements 16b to 16g are caused to operate sequentially and cyclically at an interval of seconds. Thus, the operation ofdisplay elements 16a to 16g also displays seconds.

Upon operation of the push button 40, the output from inverter 43 disappears whereby the display of the seconds is interrupted. Concurrently therewith, the output of driver 17 causes the hours display section to display dates and the output from counter 32 operates one of the display elements 16a to 16g through driver 34 whereby a particular day of a week is displayed.

As above described, according to this modification, the display of the seconds is effected efficiently and dynamically by the operation of display elements [6a to 16g, and when desired, the date is also displayed. Thus, the displays of dates, hours, minutes, days ofa week are performed by the operations of hours and minutes display sections 14 and 15 and of the display elements 160 to 16g, thereby making it possible to use efficiently the dial plate of the limited area of the clock device.

Although, in the above described embodiments, the hours display section 14 is switched to also display the dates, it should be understood that the minutes display section 15 can also be switched to display the dates.

Further, it will be understood that the invention is also applicable to analogue display type clock devices. In this case, when the days of a week are displayed by the display elements and by displaying the seconds by the second hand as well as by the flickering of the display elements it is possible to provide a more dynamic display effect,

What is claimed is:

1. An electronic clock device comprising:

a clock signal generator for generating a clock signal having a highly stable frequency; first counter means responsive to said clock signals for counting the six values of units of ten-seconds obtained from the clock signal of said clock signal generator at an interval of ten seconds, for generating outputs corresponding to said six values and for generating a stepping output every 60 seconds;

second counter means for counting units of minutes which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said first counter means and for generating a stepping output every 60 minutes;

third counter means for counting units of hours which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said second counter means and for generating a stepping output every 24 hours;

fourth counter means for counting the seven valves of the days of a week which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said third counter means and for generating seven output values which correspond to the respective 7 days of the week; first display means coupled to and displaying the contents of said second and third counter means; second to eighth display means coupled to said fourth counter means providing respective unique displays corresponding to the seven output values of the output of said fourth counter means; and

display switching means for displaying the six values of the output of said first counter means by using six display means of said second to eighth display means.

2. An electronic clock device according to claim 1 further comprising means for flickering one of said second to eighth display means upon receipt of the output signal of said clock signal generator when the remaining of said second to eighth display means are displaying said six values of the output of said first counter means under the control of said display switching means.

3. An electronic clock device according to claim 1 wherein said clock signal generator includes a standard high frequency signal source and a frequency divider for dividing said standard high frequency signal into a predetermined frequency signal, said first to fourth counter means being responsive to said predetermined frequency signal.

4. An electronic clock device comprising:

a clock signal generator for generating a clock signal having a highly stable frequency; first counter means responsive to said clock signals for counting the six values of units of ten-seconds obtained from the clock signal of said clock signal generator at an interval of ten seconds, for generating outputs corresponding to said six values and for generating a stepping output every 60 seconds;

second counter means for counting units of minutes which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said first counter means and for generating a stepping output every 60 minutes;

third counter means for counting units of hours which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said second counter means and for generating a stepping output every 24 hours; fourth counter means for counting the seven values of the days of a week which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said third counter means and for generating seven output values which correspond to the respective 7 days of the week;

first display means for displaying the contents of said second and third counter means;

second display means, having six display sections, for

displaying all the seven output values from said fourth counting means except a particular output value; and

displayswitching means coupled to said second display means to cause said second display means to display the six output values from said first counting means.

5. An electronic clock device according to claim 4 further comprising third display means for displaying said particular output value from said fourth counting 

1. An electronic clock device comprising: a clock signal generator for generating a clock signal having a highly stable frequency; first counter means responsive to said clock signals for counting the six values of units of ten-seconds obtained from the clock signal of said clock signal generator at an interval of ten seconds, for generating outputs corresponding to said six values and for generating a stepping output every 60 seconds; second counter means for counting units of minutes which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said first counter means and for generating a stepping output every 60 minutes; third counter means for counting units of hours which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said second counter means and for generating a stepping output every 24 hours; fourth counter means for counting the seven valves of the days of a week which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said third counter means and for generating seven output values which correspond to the respective 7 days of the week; first display means coupled to and displaying the contents of said second and third counter means; second to eighth display means coupled to said fourth counter means providing respective unique displays corresponding to the seven output values of the output of said fourth counter means; and display switching means for displaying the six values of the output of said first counter means by using six display means of said second to eighth display means.
 2. An electronic clock device according to claim 1 further comprising means for flickering one of said second to eighth display means upon receipt of the output signal of said clock signal generator when the remaining of said second to eighth display means are displaying said six values of the output of said first counter means under the control of said display switching means.
 3. An electronic clock device according to claim 1 wherein said clock signal generator includes a standard high frequency signal source and a frequency divider for dividing said standard high frequency signal into a predetermined frequency signal, said first to fourth counter means being responsive to said predetermined frequency signal.
 4. An electronic clock device comprising: a clock signal generator for generating a clock signal having a highly stable frequency; first counter means responsive to said clock signals for counting the six values of units of ten-seconds obtained from the clock signal of said clock signal generator at an interval of ten seconds, for generating outputs corresponding to said six values and for generating a stepping output every 60 seconds; second counter means for counting units of minutes which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said first counter means and for generating a stepping output every 60 minutes; third counter means for counting units of hours which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said second counter means and for generating a stepping output every 24 hours; fourth counter means for counting the seven values of the days of a week which is operated stepwisely by the stepping output of said third counter means and for generating seven output values which correspond to the respective 7 days of the week; first display means for displaying the contents of said second and third counter means; second display means, having six display sections, for displaying all the seven output values from said fourth counting means except a particular output value; and display-switching means coupled to said second display means to cause said second display means to display the six output values from said first counting means.
 5. An electronic clock device according to claim 4 further comprising third display means for displaying said particular output value from said fourth counting means. 